[sic] of the day: earmarks

[Chris Waigl]

While reading on the Guardian Unlimited site about this morning's
terrorism scare here in London, I came across the following [sic]:

----
1pm
In Washington, the US homeland security secretary, Michael Chertoff, said
the airlines targeted were "US flag carriers".

FBI director Robert Mueller says: "This had the earmarks [sic] of an
al-Qaida plot"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/terrorism/story/0,,1841879,00.html
----

I was a bit surprised about the [sic]'ing of "earmarks", but at the same
time insecure about the options. In raw Google hits, {"had|have|has|having
the earmarks of"} gets 26,900, {"had|have|has|having the hallmarks of"}
54,600, {"had|have|has|having the mark of"} 92,000, the same in the plural
21,900 and with _markings_ 34,200. Given the context, the "earmarks"
result is bound to rise, or even to be higher than it was yesterday. None
of those is particularly high, so I'm likely missing the obvious.

I asked a U.S. friend what he'd put into the sentence, substituting "XXX"
for "earmarks", and he chose ... "earmarks".

Dialectal? Why did the Guardian use [sic]?

Chris Waigl
who expected something like that when "all Heathrow Airport staff on this
train" were asked to report to the station manager on the (Heathrow-bound)
Picadilly Line this morning.

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